What if a university’s resources could be multiplied to benefit K-12 education in the university’s backyard? In fact, what would happen if we leveraged every university as an opportunity creator in its community? We describe UCSD’s CREATE STEM Success Initiative (CSSI), a visionary collective effort spearheaded by CREATE that links faculty, staff and students with the San Diego education community in a shared effort to support K-20 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in the region. Funded by our Chancellor in July 2013, the CSSI supports core CREATE staff to work with campus and community partners to design outreach and education projects that help plug “leaks” in the regional pipeline to STEM skills, degrees, and jobs.

An anthropologist of education, Mica Pollock explores how diverse communities can come together to support students. In multiple projects based in schools, districts, cities, community organizations and the government, Pollock has asked how people might communicate so they can work together to support every young person’s talent development. A forthcoming book, Schooltalk: Rethinking What We Say About -- and To -- Students Every Day compiles her 20 years of work on this issue. Pollock—who is also a former high school teacher and civil rights worker—is Professor of Education Studies at UC San Diego and director of the university’s Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE). The center works to support underrepresented students toward college and rewarding careers. CREATE recently launched the CREATE STEM Success Initiative, which seeks to network UC San Diego’s resources to the education community’s with the goal of collectively and collaboratively improving K-20 STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics – education throughout the San Diego region. Pollock's talk will address this work particularl